Visiting Detroit more than Ford and the auto industry

If you ever need directions in Dearborn, Mich., don’t go to the local police station. They can’t tell you how to get two miles down the road.

We, in this case, included a motor coach, complete with 44 tourists, on an Excursions Unlimited Mystery Trip. We didn’t have the foggiest idea of our destination.

The driver knew where we were going, just not how to get there. He manipulated that big old motorcoach onto a curved driveway leading to the police station’s front door and went inside.

Minutes later, he was back out, fired up the coach and we were off.

Down the tree-lined avenue, past a 1,000 or so people in a field, celebrating the last day of Ramadan. A right turn at the corner, left at the stop light, and we were seeing the sights in a mid-town residential neighborhood.

Turn the corner, ease over the curbing, turn right at the stoplight, left at the corner and we were back at the tree-lined avenue past things and places that looked distressingly familiar.

The coach swung into the curved driveway, like a horse heading for the barn, and stopped once again at the front door of Dearborn’s “finest.”

It didn’t take but an eye-blink before our driver was back.

Out the driveway we went, and this time, we went with authority in every tire.

This part of Michigan is flat. For all I know, all of Michigan is flat. It’s as though the automobile industry took miles of farmland and claimed it for their own.

We passed enormous office buildings of Chrysler, Ford and GM.

Where we were going was soon clear, the 2,000-acre Ford Motor Complex at Rouge. We were going to see F-150 pickup trucks, travel down one of Ford’s assembly lines that he made famous the world over.

We weren’t the only visitors. Other coaches were lined up in the parking lot. Uniformed guest relations people were waiting to guide us through the plant. There were Steps 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, each with a different venue.

We took seats in a small movie theater, curved rows with an adequate stage. Evidently, someone at the plant knew that old bit about “hurry up and wait,” and we did as the theater slowly filled with visitors.

A fellow traveler, Bobby, took the stage and was about to entertain us, when Miss Maria, in a full guest relations uniform, marched in the door and boomed across the room, “Get down from there.”

He did.

A long corridor led from the entrance building to the actual assembly plant. As you walked along, television monitors hanging from the ceiling intoned do’s and don’ts in a robotic voice.

Was Big Brother watching?

The conveyer floor panels carrying parts that eventually unite and become a truck, move slowly, but consistently.

Factory workers, at what seemed to be at a ratio of one female to every 20 male workers are casually dressed, shorts, jeans, T’s and just as casually perform whatever task they have to complete the job.

The noise is constant and loud. Some wear earplugs; many wear work gloves to protect their hands.

All production stops from noon to half past for a lunch break.

Fascinating.

Black, red, silver, white, blue fronts came by. The engines rose from the floor and attached themselves under the hood. Robots slapped on windshields and truck beds were joined with their matching cabs.